F 74 
.72 057 
Copy 1 



<? <* w f : 



CELEBRATION 

OF THE 

SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

FOUNDING OF THE OLD COLONY 

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF 

MASSACHUSETTS. 



COMMEMORATIVE OEATION 

DELIVEKED AT TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 

MAY 4, 1903, 



BY 



John Ordronaux 



OF NEW YORK. 




PUBLISHED BY THE OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 

1903. 



CELEBRATION 

OF THE 

SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

FOUNDING OF THE OLD COLONY 

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF 

MASSACHUSETTS. 



COMMEMORATIVE ORATION 

DELIVERED AT TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 

MAY 4, 1903, 

BY 

John Ordrokalx 

OF NEW YORK. 




PUBLISHED BY THE OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 

1903. 






Gift 

Odmegie Instit.iitioll 

il; ■uf'ho: ;: Office, 
f?S'07 



ORATION. 

My presence among you to-day is an event which justly 
awakens feelings of profound gratitude and astonishment ; of 
gratitude, because of the length of days with continuing 
health granted me by our Almighty Father; and, next, of 
astonishment at the rare combination of circumstances which 
has assigned me so prominent a part in the exercises of the 
occasion. 

This Golden Anniversary, so gratifying to you, is a day of 
startling reminiscences to me. All my fellow members who 
assembled in the study of Rev. Mr. Emery half a century ago 
to organize this Society, have gone to their final reward, and 
I, alone, spared by the will of a benevolent Creator, am 
present as their last survivor to participate in these festivities. 
Surely, no reflecting mind can fail to see the guiding hand of 
a superintending Providence in these mysteries of survivor- 
ship which cluster about longevity. 

It is fifty years to-day since the General Court of Massa- 
chusetts granted to the Old Colony Historical Society a 
charter bestowing upon it an official life, with the right of 
perpetual succession. I was here at that time as a young 
lawyer recently admitted to the Bar, and a participant in the 
organization of this Society. Having thus witnessed its official 



4 OLD COLONY HISTOKICAL SOCIETY. 

birth, and helped to rock its infant cradle, the permission 
now vouchsafed me to return after so long an interval, in 
order to witness its fiftieth anniversary, constitutes an epoch 
in my life of too unique a character not to awaken feelings of 
wonder, rising into bewilderment. To be thus called upon to 
mingle the present with the distant past; to revive and renew 
its miscellaneous associations long faded from view; to set 
back the clock of the century and reproduce the events of its 
past hours ; to open the catacombs of memory and search its 
records with inquisitorial eyes — all these acts of reminiscent 
reproduction seem like the interjection of a feverish dream 
among the cold realities of a noisy, bustling, discordant world. 

There are occasions in life which can never be anticipated 
or purposely constructed. They cannot be designed by any 
ingenuity of man, nor repeated at the command of his will. 
This is one of them, and, in the natural order of time, it is 
both a privilege and an opportunity which can come to us 
but once. Summoned by a sense of duty to appear here in 
order to answer your roll-call, and to rehearse the history of 
the origin and subsequent career of our Society, I stand as 
the representative of two distant periods, to each of which I 
can extend a hand. The first roll-call which I made as its 
Secretary was in May, 1853. Were I to repeat it to-day, no 
answering voice would be heard. Neither the call of duty 
nor the allurements of affection can bring back these de- 
parted colleagues. 

Fifty years forms a large chapter in the life of any modern 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 6 

literary society. Fifty years to look back upon and to re- 
view, not statistics alone, or tabulated collections of antiqui- 
ties in your Hall, but much of this work occurring in the 
midst of, and included in the daily life of an active community 
like your own — quick to perceive, strong to undertake, 
zealous to accomplish — a hive of industry whose inhabitants 
are " Ever reaching to those things which are before ! " Fifty 
years in which to count the graves of an extinguished 
generation of friends and fellow workmen, and to find myself 
the last laborer of them all, still able to raise my voice to do 
honor to their memory. 

" Can such things be, 

And overcome us like a summer's cloud 

Without our special wonder?" 

To recall all these varying disconnected facts, brings 
before my eyes a tumultuous stream of names, persons and 
events that strikes my imagination now, like a tale woven in 
the loom of historical fiction. Explanations cannot, however, 
always explain the unexpected, unaccountable changes in 
men's circumstances. Unseen, yet ever present, is that 
sovereign "Divinity which shapes our ends" through the 
labor of our hands, yet independent of our will. For, after 
all that can be said about it, human life in its last analysis is 
but a succession of mysteries and miracles born from the 
womb of Time, each in its turn destined to be disclosed 
through its fulfilment of some fore-ordained divine purpose. 
All that we can be sure of in human destiny, is, that He who 



6 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

holds the issues of life in the hollow of His hand never abdi- 
cates His sovereignty. 'Tis His to will and to do; 'tis ours 
to hear, submit and obey. 

In answering, therefore, your very flattering invitation to 
act as your Orator in a review of this many-sided epic, I have 
felt that I was obeying a doubly imperative summons speak- 
ing to me through the voice of duty, and coming as if from 
the graves of the founders themselves. And since they are 
not here to prompt my memory or guide my pen in writing 
their annals, I trust that I shall not fall into the error of 
unrolling so large a canvas that my untrained brush may 
not be able to fill it. 

Now and then, in the lives of institutions, as in those of 
men, there come occasions when it is proper to pause for self- 
examination ; when it seems a duty to review past actions and 
to measure their results ; when the fitting time has arrived to 
institute, as it were, a day of judgment — to summon parties, 
to hear witnesses, and to pronounce a verdict upon the facts 
as presented. This is the mission of History, whether record- 
ing the lives of institutions or of men, the differences between 
which are surface differences alone, the essentials not being 
widely dissimilar. Such an occasion is the present one. It 
marks a period of many busy, fruitful years since the found- 
ing of this Society, which now offers its life to the scrutiny 
of a public examination. If you ask me for its monument, it 
is here — partly in stone, partly in antiquarian contributions, 
which, under the name of transactions are designed to rescue 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 7 

your early history from the engulfing waters of oblivion. To 
speak more specifically, that monument consists of public 
records, of private annals, of domestic antiquities, whether 
heirlooms, or other household treasures, of biographical 
sketches, of families, together with family portraits, their 
coats of arms and hatchments, the lingering relics of heraldic 
practice ; of private letters, old newspapers, book accounts 
and such other floating miscellaneous papers as will stand for 
exhibits of either laws, customs or manners existing during 
the Colonial or Revolutionary period of American history. 
All these have been collected and stored in its Memorial Hall. 
This Museum of Antiquities, charged with the custody and 
safekeeping of these precious treasures, is the monument I 
offer you, as an ever-living witness to the fifty years labor of 
the sous and daughters of the Old Colony. Small in its 
architectural dimensions and already indicative of its growing 
incapacity to meet the demands of its increasing accumula- 
tions, it pleads with touching emphasis for enlargement. 
Amid all surrounding monuments of municipal progress here, 
whether dedicated to educational, commercial or literary 
purposes, the members of our Society may point to this 
humble treasure house of ancestral memories with feelings of 
true filial pride and congratulation. It is a flower of piety 
grown in the soil of material thrift, small in itself yet fragrant. 
The past achievements of Taunton as a centre of industrial 
activity and of commercial energy were, in my day, second 
to those of no community occupying this colonial soil, and 



8 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

the progress she had made in the development of the me- 
chanic arts had justly placed her among the foremost cities 
of the old Bay State. Capital and industry had both com- 
bined to enlarge her home business and to expand the horizon 
of her external commerce. And although younger cities 
have sprung up about her, the hum of her industries is still 
everywhere heard in her streets, and, like the music of the 
reaper's scythe, proclaims the in-gathering of the generous 
daily harvest. In all these past years the smile of a superin- 
tending Providence has never been withheld from her citizens 
or their labors. Neither fire, flood or pestilence have ever 
desolated her homes. Her's is, indeed, a beautiful picture of 
the sunshine and prosperity which attends the steady con- 
servative practice of the arts of peaceful industry. Measured 
by ordinary commercial standards of prosperity, such results 
are very gratifying to worldly ambition. They are also a 
spur to zeal and serve to maintain the momentum acquired by 
the arts thus successfully practiced. But material success 
alone should not be the sole object of municipal government, 
or the highest aim of individual effort. Man lives universally 
through his sentiments and affections before he does through 
his intellect. The great agitating storms of life, at either 
extreme of joy or sorrow, of hope or failure, of confidence or 
its breach, all take their rise in the one common center of our 
human emotions. It has always been true that " One touch 
of Nature makes the whole word kin." Our public parks 
and flower beds, our libraries, our music halls, our poetry and 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 9 

the drama, all testify to the demands of a spiritual appetite 
for objects which cannot be taken in the hand ; which cannot 
be weighed, measured or transferred by trade or barter. 

Therefore, viewing all the wide avenues of prosperity with 
which Taunton abounds ; the teeming industries which fill 
the air with ceaseless pulsations from forge, furnace and 
factory ; the whirl of mill wheels and the ringing of anvils ; 
viewing all these absorbing interests in the drama of her daily 
life as causes for congratulation, it is still more gratifying, in 
the light of this day's observances both to know, and to feel 
that neither the roaring of the loom, the singing of the shut- 
tle, the clang of the hammer or the thunder of machinery, 
have silenced the voice of affection and reverence which still 
speaks in the lives of the descendants of the Pilgrims. It 
was not, therefore, the commerce or the mechanic arts of 
Taunton ; not the loom, or the spindle ; not the factory or 
the furnace, the cotton, the iron or the silver industry ; it 
was not either of these, or all combined, that gave life and 
breath to the Old Colony Historical Society. It was none of 
these promoters of material prosperity that called it into 
being. Nay, if you ask for the motive which prompted its 
creation, the answer will be found in the Fifth Command- 
ment: "Honor thy father and thy mother." 

This Fifth Commandment, which stands forth so promi- 
nently in the moral code of all civilized nations, is no new 
canon of obligation, but forms part of the traditional religion 
and domestic usages of races whose antiquity antedates by 



10 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

many centuries that of our own Christianity. It belongs to 
no age and to no particular people. The Chinese have 
practiced it as an article of faith from times remote enough 
to stand in the very dawn of history, and so intense is their 
reverence for this dogma of ancestor worship and the law of 
sacrilege which it embodies, that, in the recent Boxer rebel- 
lion, among the most flagrant crimes charged against the 
government was that of allowing foreigners to run railroads 
through native cemeteries and thus to desecrate their soil. 
The presence of this fifth commandment in the Tables of the 
Law was the re-affirmation of a Divine law already implanted 
in the human heart, and forming part of that universal con- 
science in which are to be found the roots of all moral 
conduct and positive jurisprudence. In its domestic aspects, 
it was intended as a tribute of filial gratitude to our parents 
when living, and to their memory when dead ; and in its 
grander influences upon human society it has ever been a 
controlling force in the perpetuation of ancestral virtues and 
achievements. 

Reverence and loyalty are due to every good family name 
and family character, and should form a part of the religion 
of all reflecting minds. When, therefore, the duty was as- 
signed me as its first Secretary to construct its Seal, I made 
the legend upon it speak the baptismal vow with which the 
Society dedicated itself to the service of the memory of the 
Fathers. For, behind the glamor of its legislative charter ; 
behind the thought which had engendered the idea of a 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 11 

Historical Society for the Old Colony of Massachusetts ; behind 
the faith which built its foundations in serene hope of a future 
which we to-day enjoy and glorify ; behind all these underly- 
ing elements, spoke the still, small voice of loyalty — loyalty 
to ancestors, loyalty to the memory of Bradford and Brew- 
ster, Winthrop, Winslow, Prince and Standish, who had 
planted the first seeds of our national polity and national 
character. 

The historian of a historical society has a double task to 
accomplish ; first to describe scenes in which he has himself 
been an interested spectator, if not an actor, and next to 
portray occurrences, both personal and public, often involving 
unwritten customs and traditions, where the individual action 
is essentially submerged in the larger action of the community. 
His object, then, must be to present to posterity a panorama 
of events, sometimes connected, sometimes disparted, but 
preferably in their aggregate appearance and results. The 
spirit of the subject, rather than an itemized schedule of 
events should constitute the animating motive of his work, 
the minor details of which may not deserve special mention 
at every stage of his narrative. This is particularly the case 
with the history of a literary institution whose life is best re- 
flected in the records of its administration. We cannot, how- 
ever, escape the presence of the personal element in corporate 
action, since it represents in varying degrees the external 
character of men, their industry, their fluctuating endeavors, 
their purposes, their hopes, the obstacles encountered by 



12 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

them, and the success achieved. The annals of our Society 
include portions of contemporary, as well as of colonial and 
revolutionary history. We have not been dealing with 
legends, ballads, or old-wives' stories, but with substantive 
facts remembered by living witnesses, or recorded in accessi- 
ble documents. 

It is common to speak, without exception, of any cor- 
poration as a soulless body by reason of the legal metaphor 
embodied in its definition, " an artificial person, invisible, 
intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law." But 
ours was never such from its very inception. It has always 
had a soul, and that soul is loyalty to the Fifth Commandment. 
The men who founded it represented in their action obedience 
to the spirit and the letter of this Divine Law. The motives 
which prompted them, and the spirit which has ever directed 
its course have all been soul-born and spiritual, instead of 
being material, motives. No breath of worldly desire ; no 
stain of ambition for local fame, power or secular gain, ever 
entered as a moving consideration into its foundation. 
Throughout their labors, the personal equation of zeal, energy 
and loving enthusiasm always carried the plus sign before it. 
Outside also of this field, their sense of duty was broad and 
comprehensive. It was alive to all public wants, whose de- 
mands were an ever-standing call for action. Therefore, was 
it that their aftections were not confined alone to the narrow 
sphere of a historical society having but a limited field of 
activity, as a noiseless collector of antiquities. Far from it. 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 13 

Their good citizenship embraced a wider territory at the Bar, 
in the Church, on the Bench, and carried with it more miscel- 
laneous and more responsible duties. To you who lived in 
close touch and daily relations with them — while I, as a fifty- 
year absentee can only speak from hearsay and tradition — to 
you, it is well known that the honored names of Morton, 
Daggett, Reed and Emery, will occupy a larger space in the 
municipal history of Taunton, even than they do in that of 
our Society. Nor should we omit from this galaxy of our 
worthies the name of John D. W. Hall, who, if not himself, 
among the founders, yet, as the Editor of a local journal, 
gave us, from the very first, the hearty support of his paper, 
and, later on, when filling the office of Secretary, devoted 
with an irrepressible ardor the declining years of a long life 
to the services of the Society. 

In rehearsing the annals of our association from its incep- 
tion, I am dealing with both original and reflective history. 
The former enables me to relate events which passed before 
my eyes, and in which I took part. Unfortunately, the time 
occupied by this period was too short to enable me, at this 
day, to do more than give you from personal knowledge what 
is only the preface to the fifty years of life we are now cele- 
brating. My removal from Taunton in July, 1854, only one 
year after the Society's incorporation, breaks, of necessity, 
the continuity of this personal knowledge, and I am left in 
the position of a late gatherer of such disconnected facts, 
records and public events as have been kindly furnished me 



14 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

by your Secretary. Without his generous aid, I should have 
been unwilling to accept the responsibilities of this hour, and 
equally unable to meet its exacting demands for historical 
accuracy. I owe it, therefore, to Mr, Seaver, as well as to my- 
self, to make this public statement, in order that merit may 
be acknowledged where merit is deserved. Had I remained 
a member of your community and in close touch with your 
contemporary history in its varied relations to this Old Colony 
Society, my equipment as your Historian Avould have reached 
much nearer to what you had a right to expect. But all this 
was prevented by my removal. Moreover, the dry statistical 
facts of reflective history, however carefully collated or pre- 
sented to an audience, cannot be expected to enchain their 
attention, or to impart sentiment to an occasion dedicated to 
rejoicing and congratulations. To be interesting, such facts 
should be picturesque. They should represent living efforts 
moved by human affections and be a picture of the kaleido- 
scope of social life. They should bespeak the movements of 
the heart, the mind and the hand — the energy of warm blood 
and the ardor of temperament. These are the constructive 
forces of life in action, and, when directed by an uplifting 
purpose, are the things which impart nobility to the labors of 
men. In our descriptions of them there may be coloring and 
there may be philosophy, but there need not be conjecture 
alone, for truth does not allow us to draw upon our imagina- 
tion. The despotism of a fact wherever met, must be 
acknowledged and accorded its due influence. 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 15 

We cannot, however, at will separate biography from 
history in the lives of institutions, any more than in those 
of men. It will always remain true that " All the world 's 
a stage," and life, whether local or national, whether in a 
public arena or a private home, only parts of a universal 
drama. The theatres and court-rooms we visit, and the 
romances we pore over in print, afford us no scenes or 
incidents more stirring to heart and mind than those we daily 
move among as witnesses or actors. In raising, therefore, 
the curtain of our Society's chronology, I must first in- 
troduce an element of biography which justice, friendship 
and reverence for the memory of its founders alike combine 
to demand. And, where all are equally meritorious, it is 
difficult to discriminate by exclusion. Yet, there was one 
conspicuous leader whose name, like Abou Ben Ahdem's, in 
the poet's vision, "led all the rest." It is the name of 

NATHANIEL MORTON 

and to his memory we owe the homage of our gratitude for 
the foundation of the Old Colony Historical Society. To 
him exclusively, belongs the merit of having foreseen the 
expediency of this local association and its future usefulness, 
as a conservator of historical antiquities still ungathered. 

It was a bold move to make under the shadow and within 
the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the 
parent of all similar associations in the Commonwealth ; a 



16 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

society then already 60 years old, well intrenched in the 
esteem of the people, and possessed of a library and rich 
stores of colonial history and antiquities. It had claimed the 
attention and received the assistance of the scholars, states- 
men and divines of the Commonwealth. A long series of 
publications bore witness to the regularity of its meetings 
and the efficiency of its work, as shown in the character of 
those official transactions. Every new item of local history 
seemed, or was expected, to drift by some underlying and 
mysterious current of attraction toward its shelves, and to 
require to be passed under its scrutiny before receiving a cer- 
tificate of authenticity. Like our national currency, its 
papers passed everywhere without discount. Its lynx-eyed 
officers were quick to prick the bubbles of historical conceit, 
and to explore the errors of apprentices in archseology. It 
could safely be said that if you found any item of Massachu- 
setts history vouched for by that Society, the record of its 
truth was closed, and no appeal from it could be taken. 
And there were, also, at that time other antiquarian societies 
in existence, such as the American Antiquarian Society of 
Worcester, incorporated in 1812 ; the Pilgrim Society of Ply- 
mouth in 1820, the New England Historical and Genealogical 
Society in 1815, and the Essex Institute in 1848, but of these 
the Pilgrim Society was the only historical one within the 
limits of the Old Colony. 

It is needless to say that all the foregoing Societies 
were ever on the alert for fresh acquisitions of materials 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 17 

to add to their treasures, and not likely to have refused 
their acceptance from whatever portion of the Common- 
wealth they might have come. I dwell upon these facts 
to show the boldness of the undertaking embraced in 
the foundation of our Society by iVir. Morton, and the loyal 
determination to leave no portion of the Old Colony un- 
searched for relics of the days and labors of your ancestors. 
How well this good office has been discharged during the past 
fifty years, I leave to the treasures contained in your Hall, 
and your transactions to prove. They speak of labors per- 
formed by prying eyes in out-of-the-way places ; of garrets 
ransacked, store-rooms overhauled ; of ancient, weather- 
stained letters and other papers rescued from the enveloping 
dust of scores of years. All these constitute historical 
exhibits of an uncontradictable character, and may safely be 
trusted as guides in forming your verdict. 

I have said that we owe to the memory of Nathaniel 
Morton the homage of our gratitude as the founder of this 
Society. Nothing less will justify historical truth or vindi- 
cate my right to appear as its exponent. And the Brief 
which I hold to-day in behalf of this Society, while including 
him as one of its important points, calls for its treatment on 
a basis of friendship and personal regard, no less than on that 
of truth and historical accuracy. 1 cannot forget that for 
nearly two years I occupied very close relations to him, both 
as a student and member of his family, and, although over 
forty years have elapsed since his death, this is the first 



18 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

opportunity ever given me of paying a public tribute to his 
memory. However late this may appear, I am happy to be 
able to bring my little measure of cotton and oil to feed this 
lamp of remembrance. He was a lawyer of superior talents, 
with the most brilliant prospects which a distinguished 
ancestry, influential connections and a successful professional 
practice could open before him. But, dying in mid-career, at 
the early age of 34, his sun set while it was yet day, and his 
way was barred to that professional eminence which he 
seemed so conspicuously destined to reach. That which was 
accorded to his distinguished father, as Governor of the 
Commonwealth, and to his eminent brother, as its Chief 
Justice, never came to him. Unfortunately, the "dry light of 
Jurisprudence" did not present such allurements to his mind, 
as to kindle in it the fervor of a consecrated worshipper. 
His successes cost him little eifort, or even preparation. It 
seemed that his talents secured him such easy victories at the 
Bar that he never felt the necessity of pressing them to 
their full capacity. Had he lived longer, age and rivalry 
would have broadened his view of that necessity. 

Whether the idea of founding this Society originated with 
Mr. Morton, or was the product of another mind, cannot now 
be known, but he, at least, was the first to present a plan for 
it in a concrete form. I had never heard of the project until 
he broached the subject to me. This was in the autumn of 
1852, soon after my arrival in Taunton. At that time his 
father-in-law, Mr. Francis Baylies, author of a Historical Mem- 
oir of the Colony of New Plymouth, was still living. As a 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 19 

ripe scholar and historian, his interest in American history 
did not confine itself to the Old Colony alone, for he had 
planned a work of extensive proportions to embrace 
the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and 
Madison. Skeleton outlines of these several works had 
already been drafted, and, after his death, were submitted to 
me for examination. It is chiefly, however, as the historian 
of the Plymouth Colony that Mr. Baylies will be remembered, 
and it is a reasonable presumption, in view of his wide 
knowledge of local history, that he was consulted, together 
with Gov. Morton, Mr. William Baylies, Mr. Edmund Bay- 
lies, and members of the clergy and Bristol County Bar who 
were personal friends of Mr. Morton. I was present at most 
of these preliminary meetings, but, being in their nature in- 
formal, kept no record of them. The project grew rapidly, 
under the increasing conviction that such a Society had before 
it a field of antiquarian research, which had not yet been 
exhausted. 

At that day, the phrase, "Old Colony," when intended to 
describe a geographical territory, was popularly used as a 
term of familiar application to the fringe of towns bordering 
upon Massachusetts Bay, or to the Counties of Plymouth and 
Barnstable, because representing the soil first trodden by the 
Pilgrim Fathers. As a matter of history and civil govern- 
ment, this was plainly an error, but names of places when 
popularly interpreted do not always indicate their claims to 
authenticity, and their continued use more often depends 
upon some accident of adhesiveness, than upon geographical 



20 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

accuracy. The earliest use of the term which I can find was 
made by an association of Plymouth citizens who organized 
themselves under the title of the Old Colony Club, in 1769 
and which was dissolved in 1773. In like manner, a news- 
paper called the Old Colony Reporter was established in 
1821, and the Old Colony Bank of the same place was char- 
tered in 1832. With the single exception of the Old Colony 
Iron Works, of Taunton, established about the year 1850, the 
prefix "Old Colony" does not appear, outside of Plymouth 
County, to have been attached to any corporation until 181-1, 
when the Old Colony Railroad was chartered as a corporation 
operating a road between Plymouth and Boston, and which 
was followed by our own incorporation in 1853. This further 
fixed the name as one of geographical limitation to the coun- 
ties of Plymouth and Bristol, and by continued use has now 
become generally adopted and intrenched in the popular 
memory. Mr. Morton, Mr. Ellis Ames and Judge Daggett, 
being careful lawyers and painstaking antiquarians, when a 
name for our Society was under discussion, had these facts 
before them, and took the broad ground that ours was not a 
misnomer, but that we always formed a portion of the Old 
Colony and had been so recognized from the first in the early 
history of Gov. Bradford (2). Their views being heartily 
endorsed by their associates, we were incorporated as the only 
Historical Society under our present title. 

Acting upon these grounds, when the Society instructed 
me, as its first Secretary, to construct an appropriate seal, I 



(1) Works of Daniel Webster, Vol. 1, p. 3. 

( 2 ) Bradford's History, p. 44. 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 21 

placed in its centre, and as its leading feature, Plymouth 
Rock with the date 1620, and the legend, "Lux prima 
occidentis," over a sunburst. This was an acknowledgement 
of Plymouth's precedence in receiving the earliest light of civil 
and religious liberty in the Colony, and outside of this, I 
inscribed our own baptismal vow of " Patrum memorium 
custodire," with a border, containing the official name of our 
Society. Such is the glyptic interpretation of our Seal with 
the underlying motive of its construction. 

This completed our legal equipment of a charter and a 
seal, but, although our act of incorporation was of the date of 
May 4, 1853, no formal organization occurred until the 23d 
of February, 1854, when, at a meeting held at the study of 
Rev. Mr. Emery, its first Board of officers was elected, con- 
sisting of the following persons : 

President, Nathaniel Morton, Esq., Taunton. 
Vice Presidents'. Rev. Samuel H. Emery, Taunton. 

Hon. John Daggett, Attleboro. 
Directors: Rev. Mortimer Blake, Mansfield. 

Hon. Samuel L. Crocker, Taunton. 

Ellis Ames, Esq., Canton. 

Henry B. Wheelwright Esq., Taunton. 

William R. Deane, Esq., Boston. 

Caleb Swan, M. D., Easton. 
Recording Secretary and Librarian : Edgar H. Reed, 
Taunton. 

Corresponding Secretary : John Ordronaux, Taunton. 
Treasurer : Hodges Reed, Esq., Taunton. 



22 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

The next step to be taken by the Society related to the 
acquisition of a suitable home for its future collections. Mr. 
Morton had had this object under consideration from the 
very beginning, and, soon after our incorporation, informed 
me that he had purchased the Old Taunton Bank building, 
corner of Cedar street, with the intention of having it passed 
over to the Society. Meanwhile, a subscription list had been 
opened representing its capital, which had then been fixed 
at 15,000, divided into $1,000 shares of 15.00 each, and the 
public were invited by suitable circulars to become stock- 
holders. A committee of 10 was also appointed to solicit 
subscriptions. In response to this invitation, the records 
show that 252 shares only were sold, aggregating 11,260. As 
the Old Bank building, according to the consideration men- 
tioned in the deed of conveyance, had cost Mr. Morton 
$3,750, the amount of the capital then subscribed was inade- 
quate for its purchase, and the premises remained in the 
hands of Mr. Morton until his death. 

From 1854 to 1885, the Society being without a fixed 
habitation, held its meetings at various places, according as 
circumstances favored special localities. Its active member- 
ship was then small, and its meetings without particular sig- 
nificance. Under the law of organic growth, it had not yet 
reached the plane of a working capacity. Time enough had 
not elapsed to make itself felt as a working force. Yet dur- 
ing all these years, there was a growing feeling of the impor- 
tance of collecting historical treasures of a perishable nature, 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 23 

stored in out-of-the-way places, and daily exposed to the risks 
of conflagration or other destructive agencies. This feeling 
finally assumed a concrete form of action on the occasion of 
the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement 
and incorporation of Taunton, when, at a meeting of the 
Society held on July 20, 1885, Rev. Dr. Emery introduced 
the following resolution : 

"Whereas, the Old Colony Historical Society has had an 
honorable existence as an incorporated body for more than 
thirty years and deserves well in its high aims and purposes 
of the Old Colony, 

"Therefore, Resolved : That it is a titting time as we pro- 
pose celebrating the birthday of these early towns, to revive 
the attempt begun in 1854, but never consummated, to pro- 
vide a permanent building for historical purposes and a 
suitable place of deposit for books and valuable papers and 
documents connected with the early history of the Old 
Colony." 

A committee was appointed to act and report upon this 
resolution. As a result of the success of their labors, in the 
ensuing year, at a meeting held October 11, 1886, the Presi- 
dent announced that three-fourths of the purchase money 
necessary to secure the Cedar street chapel had been raised, 
and urged the continuance of the work of collecting funds. 
This was speedily accomplished, and on September 25, 1886, 
the Society finally came into possession of its permanent 
home through a deed of conveyance executed by Mr. Joseph 



24 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

Dean, its previous owner, reciting among its covenants that : 

"The purpose of the grantee in taking this deed free 
from all conditions, restrictions or limitations, and absolutely 
in fee, is to devote the property forever to those uses for 
which the Old Colony Historical Society was incorpor- 
ated." (*) 

In the interval occurring between 1854 and 1886, there 
had been occasional meetings of the Society, and generally at 
different places. One, in particular, deserves mention be- 
cause celebrating its 25th anniversary. It was held in the 
Common Council room, April -30, 1878 ; Rev. Henry M. 
Dexter offered prayer ; President Daggett made some re- 
marks, and Rev. Dr. Emery read a sketch of the origin and 
progress of the Association during its first 25 years, and Rev. 
Dr. Tarbox, of Boston, presented a paper on the differences 
between the Pilgrims and Puritans. Following this, there 
came a long season of remarkable inactivity, for which no ex- 
planation can now be given. From 1860, until 1885, no ex- 
tended records of meetings of the Society appear to have 
been kept; dates alone of their occurrence are the sole ex- 
hibits I can find. This lethargy was doubtless occasioned by 
the want of a home and rallying centre around which to 
gather those historical treasures which have since multiplied 
so rapidly, and have imparted to the Society so living a char- 
acter, with such large prospects of usefulness. Meanwhile a 
taste for antiquarian research, and a zest in gratifying it had 

(3) There were 84 contributors to this purchaBe, of which Mr. Dean was himself 
the leading and Iarge»>t. 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 25 

begun to exhibit itself. This initiative and its results can 
best be illustrated by a few statistics. 

Its membership on starting was 250. It now represents 
644, of which 259 are life, 276 resident, 103 corresponding, 
and 26 honorary. The capital allowed by the original char- 
ter was $15,000. In 1887 the charter was amended by ex- 
tending the limit of its capital to $50,000. No right estimate 
of the present value of its property can be made, outside 
of its hall and library, estimated to be worth about $9,650, 
because its most valuable property consists of things which, 
being in their very nature irreplaceable, are consequently 
priceless. 

Since the acquisition of a Memorial Hall, its strides in pop- 
ularity have been rapid and extensive. It would seem as if 
the public, though tardy in recognizing the important duty it 
was performing as a local historian, was seeking to make 
amends for past omissions of interest. As proof of this may 
be eited the fact that 123 family portraits now grace its 
walls; 400 volumes of historical memoirs of towns and per- 
sons, together with school reports, are on its shelves ; also 
hundreds of pamphlets; 201 volumes of newspapers begin- 
ning with the first one printed here in 1820, and quantities 
of relics whose miscellaneous character forbids any particular 
enumeration. What it most seriously needs now is a fire- 
proof building in which to preserve and exhibit such articles 
as cannot safely be exposed in its Hall, together with its own 
records. Every year makes the demand for such protection 
more and more imperative. 



26 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

From a summary schedule of records furnished me by 
your Secretary, Mr. Seaver, it appears that from 1854 to 1868 
meetings of the Society were held with apparent regularity, 
sometimes only for the election of officers and generally with 
little or no business to transact. From June 6, 1868, to Feb- 
ruary 23, 1878, a period of nearly eleven years, no meetings 
at all were held. The Society seems to have fallen into a 
state of suspended animation. Why this should have oc- 
curred, there appears no good reason to show. It happened 
as events in life will sometimes, without any inculpating cir- 
cumstances lying at anyone's door. The Society was adrift. 
It was still without a home. Judge Daggett had been its 
president since the death of Mr. Morton in 1856, and so con- 
tinued until 1886, a period of thirty years, but his advanced 
age and declining health had long disabled him from taking 
any active part in its movements, and it slumbered in con- 
sequence. Upon his death, Rev. Samuel H. Emery was 
elected President, remaining so until his own decease in 
1902. Thereupon, a regenerative process seems to have be- 
gun its good work. This subsequent period of 16 years 
marks a most gratifying regeneration of all the affairs of the 
Society, together with great accessions to its antiquarian 
treasures. Bequests began to flow in, and donations, in ad- 
dition to those already received for the purchase of its Hall, 
were made to the amount of !|3,000. There have also been 
manifestations of rapidly increasing public interest in the 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 27 

welfare of the Society ; contributions of historical papers have 
been read at its meetings ; it has issued five volumes of trans- 
actions, and a sixth is in process of publication. This marks 
the golden age of its past history, and merits something more 
than a passing notice. For, if success be the parent of suc- 
cess, we have here great promises for the future of a Society 
which already stands on a footing of parity with any similar 
association in the Commonwealth. But that success was not 
accidental. It had a living force behind it. 

In one of those crisp apothegms of Emerson, unfolding 
the secret of a great moral truth, he tells us that an institu- 
tion is often but the lengthened shadow of one man. His- 
tory has many illustrations of this truth, which operates 
alike in small bodies as in great ; nor need we go far to find 
an instance. If there be in our Society's history any one 
man whose lengthened shadow was long a moving spiritual 
force in its life work, that man was Samuel Hopkins Emery. 
He was among its founders, and stood next to Morton in 
the chronology of its origin. But even as Elder Brewster, 
though next to Bradford in the Plymouth Colony, was in 
fact the moving spiritual force of that community, so Emery 
acted a corresponding part in our Society. And, as Morton 
died soon after its foundation, and Daggett was physically 
incapacitated for nursing and developing an institution re- 
quiring residence among, and deep roots in the affection of 
a communit}', it was providentially left to his successor to be 
our Moses and regenerator. Who that ever knew him, and 



.^8 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

followed his labors in behalf of this Society, will venture to 
believe that without him we could have said this day to the 
world, Come, examine us, and see what has been done 
through the leadership of this faithful steward of our his- 
torical vineyard. No talent of his was ever buried in a 
napkin, or left at rest. His enthusiasm was without abate- 
ment in any labor which he undertook, and his quickened 
pulse imparted electrical energy to everything he touched. 
Possessed of a fervid temperament, his warmth of heart and 
zeal were an inspiring force to all around, for he was one of 
those devoted servants of the Lord who firmly believe that 
he who plougheth, should plough in hope. And thus it was 
that, to the very last, he carried throughout his life-work an 
atmosphere of glowing ardor that shone in his countenance 
like the golden sunset of a tropical sky. 

It is a somewhat singular fact that the first years of our 
Society were years of great activity. Dr. Emery, in his his- 
torical sketch, at the celebration of its 25th anniversary on 
April 30, 1878, remarks that 

"With such industry did the Old Colony Historical So- 
ciety work, the first fifteen years of its existence, from 1853 
to 1868, that it seems to have settled down into a state of in- 
action from sheer exhaustion, but there are symptoms of a 
new awakening of this somewhat ancient Society at the pres- 
ent time." 

It would be difiicult, if not impossible, at this late day to 
assign any satisfactory reasons for this sudden drop in the 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 29 

progress of the Society, unless we borrow a figure from math- 
ematics and say that the height of a pyramid should always 
accompany the breadth of its base, and, in consequence, that 
our height then reached was all that our base could sustain, 
or, in a more popular view, it might be the effect of that sud- 
den exhaustion which often overtakes enterprises started at 
too rapid a pace. Whatever, then, may have been its cause, 
for which I can find no more logical syllogism than this, it is 
a fact that somewhere along in the Eighties the Society be- 
gan broadening its base, and its elevation followed in a cor- 
responding ratio. This should stand as a useful lesson to us 
Americans, who feel that our superior activity could have 
built Rome or the Pyramids in a day, and have swung St. 
Peter's mighty dome into place like the lid of an iron pot, at 
the single toss of a steam derrick. But historical societies 
are not architectural problems. They have deeper and wider- 
spreading roots, and their growth must draw its sap from the 
affections and living interests of the community in which 
they have their home. Dr. Emery's lengthened shadow 
seems to have been the animating force which wtought the 
new awakening of the Society's activities. 

Somewhere about the year 1886 occurs the dawn of this 
new dispensation, with Dr. Emery, Judge Bennett and 
Charles A. Reed on deck, or at the helm, to be followed by 
Messrs. Brayton, Lovering, Crapo, Porter and Judge Fuller 
and the veterans, Edgar Reed and John W. D. Hall. Now it 
was that with this inviting Memorial Hall and a broadly 



30 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

scattered membership, an aDtiquarian harvest of relics began 
rapidly flowing in. Contributions came from far and near. 
And let the truth be known that this harvest of historical 
treasures which adorns your walls, or loads your shelves, 
comes not alone from male members. In the list of busy 
gleaners the sisterhood stands high. The daughters of the 
Old Colony have been side by side with her sons in filial 
loyalty. For every Boaz, there has been a Ruth ; for every 
Aquila, there has been a Priscilla ; for every Timothy and 
Titus, there has been a Phoebe and a Triphcena. Industrious 
hands like those of whom the Scriptures make honorable 
mention, because of the practice of household virtues, have 
toiled with ardor in gathering heirlooms, and these ancestral 
crumbs have been more precious and more priceless than 
many of those accessions upon which the impress of a na- 
tional greenback currency has been stamped. 

Among these treasures of the past, whose numbers already 
exceed our architectural capacity to contain them, one has 
come to us of so weird a character as to elicit unusual won- 
der. Hoary with age, with undeciphered inscriptions await- 
ing, like another Rosetta stone, its own particular interpreter, 
the Dighton Writing Rock continues to be a marvel to an- 
tiquarian scholars. Had Columbus or Americus Vespuccius 
touched it with their feet, we should have felt that they had 
impressed upon it a character almost sacred. But, older than 
Plymouth Rock, older even than Columbus, older, in fact, 
than modern history, it stands unique in solitary and unap- 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 31 

proachable grandeur. The true meaning of its inscription 
being still a matter of litigation among archaeologists, I can- 
not undertake to express an opinion upon the merits of its 
claims as an alleged Scandinavian monument. But, whether 
that inscription be runic, or of later Indian origin, it marks 
at least an important event in the history of the ancient Vin- 
land, the Goode. And having now become part of our ac- 
quisitions, it belongs to our history, whether obtained by 
gift, purchase or devise ; nor can we, in good conscience, ven- 
ture to impeach the international reputation of that relic by 
casting doubts upon its title. If our antiquities were re- 
stricted to the period alone of English colonization of this 
continent, the Dighton Rock would represent nothing of 
value to us. But I know of no hard-and-fast rule by which 
we are debarred the privilege of collecting any relics of the 
past residence or labors of any ante-Columbian occupants of 
the soil of the Old Colony. An abstract of the title to this 
Rock shows that in 1857 it was purchased by Mr. Niels 
Arnzen, of Fall River, from Mr. Thomas F. Dean, of Berke- 
ley, on whose land it lay, for the sum of $50. In that trans- 
action, it seems Mr. Arnzen was acting as a Trustee for Mr. 
Ole Bull, the celebrated violinist, who, not being an Ameri- 
can citizen, could hold no title in real estate. After Mr. 
Bull's death, he not having completed the purchase, Mr. 
Arnzen, himself a Scandinavian, made a gift of the property 
to the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians of Copen- 
hagen, in 1860, who accepted it as a genuine monument of 



32 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

the visit of Scandinavian navigators to this coiitinent about 
the year 1008. A proposition to remove the Rock to Copen- 
hagen having failed of accomplishment, the Society presented 
it to the Old Colony Historical Society, by a deed of quit- 
claim dated January 30, 1889. And here it is destined to 
remain as our last surviving relic, "amid the wrecks of matter 
and the crush of worlds." 

In this hasty and summary review of the fifty years labors 
of the Old Colony Historical Society, there is continuing 
reason for congratulation and still more for hope. History, 
said Mr. Webster in one of his public addresses, is God's 
providence in the affairs of men. Wherever we examine a 
group of facts, or periods of time, or combinations of events 
of inexplicable connection, we find this to be true. On every 
side it is made plain that we cannot sever ourselves from the 
Divine government, nor step outside of its jurisdiction. The 
father of modern philosophy, in writing upon Fortune, holds 
up to view the strong faith in which the great minds of an- 
tiquity, without even the light of revelation to guide them, 
rested in that belief. That which they called Fortune, we 
call Providence, a power which makes for righteousness with 
grace abounding. 

The history of some portions of the Old Colony has not 
yet been exhausted by writers. The larger dramas of the 
colonial period, such as Indian wars, religious dissensions, the 
establishment of State and Town governments, their boun- 
daries and conflicting claims, the support of a state religion 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 33 

by local taxation, and church membership as a qualification 
for citizenship, all these ancient questions which formerly- 
disturbed the peace of good men's minds have disappeared 
before the light of a broader conception of Christian fellow- 
ship and of civil liberty. Although much has, in these larger 
directions of historical inquiry, been chronicled by early an- 
nalists, and more still has been sketched by later ones anx- 
ious to leave no field unswept, there are chapters of domestic 
life yet slumbering in undiscovered relics that deserve to be 
rescued from the destructive agencies of time, weather and 
accident. Crumbs are being still gathered whose value at 
times surprises us. Let the threshings continue ; let the 
gleaners keep up their work. Old farm houses — attics — 
store-rooms — closets — trunks, and wherever else collections 
of family papers have been made, should be diligently 
searched. Many a curious, and many a valuable discovery 
has been made in this way of useful historical material. Prof. 
Thorold Rogers' monumental work, entitled "Six Centuries 
of Labor and Wages in England" was compiled largely from 
searches made among old farm registers, stewards' accounts, 
family expense books, bills and receipts, and other similar 
waste-basket materials. 

Portions of Gov. Bradford's Letter Book, which, like his 
"History of Plymouth Plantations," was lost to view for many 
years, were accidentally discovered among waste papers in a 
grocery store in Nova Scotia, and subsequently published in 
the Massachusetts Historical Collections. Almost every 



34 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

chapter of human history has some lost pages in it, for which 
we should search. Sooner or later these lost jewels may be 
found and the gap be filled. Time and patience are the great 
agencies of success in historical researches. 

It is true that the public are not generally interested in 
antiquarian pursuits. They prefer to follow the movements 
forward of society, rather than to trace them in retrospect. 
The former are more picturesque, because they present a 
moving panorama of actual life, with its varied colors and 
vicissitudes. The past, consequently, has few attractions to 
those who wish to be in close touch with present events, and 
to feel their presence in the very air they breathe. But the 
function of a Historical Society is not to amuse itself, and be 
entertained with present events, so much as it is to gather 
and store those that have contributed to the movement of 
the past ; to preserve events that have marked advancement 
and progress ; events that constitute a link in the chain of 
cause and effect, and tend to illustrate God's purposes in the 
destiny of mankind. In other words, a historical society 
should be a court of historical justice, whose duty it is made 
to decide upon the legitimacy of claims for recognition in the 
annals of a country. 

The Old Colony has been fortunate in the possession of 
founders whose merits have been too often rehearsed in pri- 
vate and official chronicles to require any repetition on this 
occasion. They were men and women of strength and pur- 
pose ; their lives had been disciplined in the school of high 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 35 

endeavor, and they were acquainted with the vicissitudes 
which attend upon expatriation, upon political persecution 
and religious disfranchisement. In England, a dissenter from 
the Established Church was, in their day, regarded as the 
social and political inferior of a high churchman. This 
formed a barrier to social intimacy and influence. But 
although Dissenters and Separatists from the Ecclesiastical 
Establishment, they did not discard the principles of the 
English Common Law, which they had brought with them, 
for they began laying the foundations of our civil polity by 
establishing the Town as the political unit of popular govern- 
ment, and, in accordance with those principles, gave it a 
parochial character with sovereign power in the Church, as 
the nursery of citizenship and of civil liberty. Reduced to 
their simplest expression, these foundations rested upon the 
Bible, the common school and equality of all men before the 
law. 

In his address at the laying of the cornerstone of 
Bunker Hill Monument, Mr. Webster could pronounce no 
higher eulogium upon their virtues than by placing their 
religious character in the foreground of his praise. Allow 
me to quote his words: 

" The character," said he, " of our countrymen, moreover, 
was sober, moral and religious, * * * . We had no domes- 
tic throne to overturn, no privileged orders to cast down, no 
violent changes of property to encounter. In the American 
Revolution no man sought or wished for more than to defend 



36 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

and enjoy bis own. None hoped for plunder or spoil. * * * 
And we all know it coald not have lived a single day under 
any well founded imputation of possessing a tendency adverse 
to the Christian religion." 

These were the men and women who founded the families 
of which you are the descendants, and they have left names 
whose memory you have here pledged yourselves to preserve. 

But, in common with other portions of New England, the 
Old Colony has suffered from the disappearance of old county 
families whose names were formerly familiar in the Town 
Meeting, in the Church, at the Bar, and on the Bench. 
These were representative American families who formed and 
guided the public opinion of their communities, and gave it 
an almost statutory power in the government of civil affairs. 
Our colonial governments constituted an agricultural demo- 
cracy, and our leading families had their homes in the 
country. These homes were often birthplaces of successive 
generations. They had witnessed the beginnings of married 
life and the funerals of parents and grandparents. They 
were shrines consecrated by the memory of the most im- 
portant events in family life, and were endeared by ties that 
neither time, accident or changes of circumstance could alter. 
Cities had not yet risen to such prosperity with commercial 
allurements, as to win families away from their ancestral 
acres. The country home still remained the impregnable 
fortress of family affection and contentment. But, in a world' 
of changes and chances, men, families, states — all must take 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 37 

their turn. The unexpected of yesterday becomes the actual 
of to-day, and sadder than all changes has been the weaken- 
ing of the original American spirit which for nearly two 
centuries had pervaded home life— had directed Church 
authority and discipline, and had so animated civil govern- 
ment itself that even courts took cognizance of it in constru- 
ing the limits of public policy as applied to the police powers 
of the state. Call that American spirit, as you please, 
whether Puritan, Colonial, or Provincial, it is still the only 
true commonwealth and ethical spirit, on which a democratic 
Christian republic can be permanently established. It has 
been successfully tested in domestic peace and in civil war' 
in federal organization and in federal reconstruction, and has 
withstood every strain put upon it. In public estimation, it 
embodies the entire genius of our form of Government, 
whether in structure or administration. This American 
spirit, combining religion with local autonomy as the basis 
of civil liberty, was the cornerstone of our Commonwealth 
system. ( 1 ) It was born and nursed in the country homes 
of the original colonies, but attained its most salient form in 
the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

The men who formed the original pillars of our republican 
government were, for the most part, farmers whose families 
had had their roots in the soil of our colonies for several 
generations. They were full of the American spirit of inde- 
pendence, with names well known in public affairs. The 
Church council and the town meeting were the schools for 

(1) Frothingham's "Rise of the Republic of the U. 8.," p 22. 



38 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

their political education, where the chair of the Moderator 
and of leading Committees was usually filled from their 
ranks. The strength and authority of these country families 
has been everywhere destroyed by their removal to cities. 
In so doing, their identity became merged in that of the mis- 
cellaneous crowd. Cities, in fact, are the graveyards of 
family names and traditions, where their descendants become 
too often indifferent to the value of their political heritage 
and allow themselves to drop into indolence and insignifi- 
cance. Yet, experience shows that the power of a great name 
need not soon expire. It may be kept strong to conjure with 
in successive generations, if descendants will only continue to 
transmit an unsullied character. There is a family in this 
state, now in its fifth generation, whose voice always com- 
mands attention and respect when dealing with subjects of 
public interest ; nor is it here alone, for its reverberations 
come back to us from other parts of the country, carrying 
with them similar evidences of continuing veneration. 

A good lineage everywhere carries with it the duty of 
reverence and perpetuation. Respect for a strong character 
is universal. Mankind, without distinction of tribe, nation 
or creed, have ever felt an interior, uplifting force, in the 
consciousness of being well-born. Statues, obelisks and 
marble sepulchres testify to this veneration for ancestor- 
memory. Looking at its universality, it approaches almost 
to an intuition which religion develops into a duty. All men, 
as well as all nations, need to have ideals — ideals of virtue, of 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 39 

honor, of truth, of honesty — and a reasonable family pride is 
one of those conservative forces in human society which de- 
serves to be respected and cultivated. It is capable of acting 
both as a stimulus to patience and perseverance in good works, 
and as a deterrent from evil, in moments of temptation. It 
establishes ideals of honorable conduct and generous dealing 
which serve as barriers to greed and commercial rapacity. 
Fools may distort family pride into self conceit and vanity, as 
they may distort religion into idolatry, divine worship into 
jugglery, or solemn ceremonials into mere harlequin perform- 
ances. They may distort, but they cannot destroy it. Its 
roots are implanted in the human heart as the spiritual com- 
plement to the Fifth Commandment. 

President John Adams, while dwelling on the subject of 
family pride in one of his letters to his wife, uses these notable 
words: 

" The virtues and talents of ancestors should be considered 
as examples and solemn trusts, and produce meekness 
modesty and humility, lest they should not be imitated and 
equalled. Mortification and humiliation can only be the 
legitimate feelings of a mind conscious that it falls short of 
its ancestors in merit." ( 1 ) 

And, in an earlier letter to Hannah Adams, he discloses 
his own personal feelings more trenchantly by saying: 

" If I could ever suppose that family pride were anywhere 
excusable, I should think a descent from a line of virtuous 
independent New England farmers for one hundred and sixty 



(1) Works of John Adams, Vol. 1, 464. 



40 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

years a better foundation for it, than a descent through royal 
or noble scoundrels ever since the flood." ( 2 ) 

The same reasons which were felt to justify this Revolu- 
tionary patriarch and uncompromising democrat in his 
acceptance of family pride as a tribute to ancestry, justifies it 
in all the living descendants of the early New England colon- 
ists. They were your ancestors, as well as his own. The 
same fountain furnished both streams. Nor should this feel- 
ing be limited to New England alone. In all the original 
Thirteen States there must still be remnants of old represen- 
tative families slowly passing into oblivion. We cannot 
afiord to part with names that stand on our Declaration of 
Independence or among the framers of our Constitution 
or on our Revolutionary Rosters. Those names were borne 
by men who were the architects of our political fabric and 
who built its enduring walls. Therefore, it should be the 
duty and purpose of all Historical Societies to resuscitate 
these decaying names by doing what the Old Colony His- 
torical Society has been aiming at, in preserving the mem- 
ory of the Fathers. Let these fading patronymics be 
brought to the front and let their descendants be stimulated 
to emulate their spirit and their virtues. Our times sadly 
need a revival of Puritan siraplicitj^ and earnestness in the 
household. Since now, more than ever, it is cause for very 
solemn reflection, to see prosperity bringing in its train a 
moral indifference to things formerly held sacred ; to see a 
falling off in respect for the old family Bible and the 



(2) Works of John Adams, Vol. 9, 676. 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 41 

practice of family worship ; for the old American Sabbath ; 
for the "Old Homestead" with its local, immutable associa- 
tions, and for the purity and dignity of public office. These 
are national heirlooms deserving preservation. I repeat that 
there is reason for very serious anxiety in seeing all these 
sacred traditions undergoing disruption. They entered into 
the genius of American civil liberty and sustained its spirit- 
Moreover, they especially embodied the inherited Puritanism 
to which we owe not alone the foundations of the Republic, 
but the power given by its spirit to the conduct of our Revo- 
lution, without which, in the words just quoted from Daniel 
Webster, that Revolution would not have lived a single day. 
Yet, these are the national ideals which Americans of to-day 
are willing to stand by and see diluted, and washed out by 
the tide of miscellaneous immigration, and the tawdry imita- 
tion of foreign nobility in the customs of the most favored 
circles of our own people. Surely, American citizenship shows 
need already of much repairing, and these repairs should 
begin in the family, the initial political unit of the State. 

Let it never be forgotten that the firesides of the Old 
Colony were the original nurseries of piety, sobriety and 
loyalty in New England. These principles, continually 
practiced in them had so saturated its atmosphere as to have 
become directing elements in the formation of personal 
character. None could escape their benign, protective, 
strengthening touch. They entered into the public as well 
as the domestic life of its people, accompanying them 



42 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

wherever they went and lingering with them to the last. 
Whence it followed that the most valuable legacy of the 
Pilgrim Fathers to their children was the three-fold one of the 
Bible, the Common School and the Town Meeting. Without 
these foundation stones, our Republic would not have survived 
to witness its own Centennial. No wonder is it, therefore, that 
the places in which this legacy first found a home should have 
always exerted a mysterious, attractive power over the hearts 
of their children. They can not stray beyond its reach. 
That power and the reverence which accompanies it should 
never be allowed to expire. And, because it is both a memory 
of past virtues, and a hope of their continuing practice, there 
is cause for exultation in the fact that the uplifting influence 
of this love of Home, as a generator of patriotism, is so meri- 
toriously illustrated in the example of those Colonial families 
who still retain their roots in the soil of New England, or 
annually observe a Home-returning Thanksgiving Day or 
Home-coming-week. 

If I have dwelt with such emphasis upon the high mission 
of historical societies in our country to preserve those ideals 
of government known as the original American spirit, it is 
because I see daily evidences that European civilization has 
not proved itself capable of supplying its own betterments, 
in either civil liberty, or even in the industrial arts ; that it 
has not yet freed itself from the trammels and duplicity of 
mediaeval diplomacy ; that nations still live by the practice 
of dissimulation and mutual distrust, and turn away with 
cowardly insincerity from opportunities to lessen war and to 



OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 43 

cultivate peace ; and finally that even the Hague convention 
constitutes only a rope of sand by which none feel themselves 
to be seriously bound. Moreover, these governments have 
proved to be, to their own subjects, only " broken cisterns that 
can hold no water," with the ghost of internal revolution con- 
stantly rising before them ; and that, in sheer despair of 
finding any remedies at home, they are all turning to make 
alliances with the United States as the only remaining spirit 
of civil liberty which can extricate mankind from serfdom to 
dynasty and territorial rapacity. Whereupon, and, for the 
first time in our history, kings now condescend to fellowship 
with plain American citizens, to invite them to their tables, 
and to solicit from them, as a favor, American ideas of 
political economy in the modern arts of commerce and the 
cultivation of domestic industries. These royal heads, like 
the sheaves in Joseph's dream, all make obeisance to our 
federal genius in its various developments in commerce and 
the arts. Are not these potent signs of the high character 
which the American spirit of government has everywhere 
won for itself — in China, in Cuba, in Venezuela, and in the 
Philippines ? Are we not its Trustees, and bound to protect 
and promote it ? 

It is true that the Sons and Daughters of the American 
Revolution have organized themselves into a Grand Armj^ 
for the preservation of the ideals of American history and 
American nationality. But justice demands that their picket 
line should always be held by the children of the Old Colony. 



44 OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

It was my privilege to stand beside the cradle of this 
Society half a century ago. It is my privilege to-day to 
witness its mature manhood and the long train of its valuable 
historical acquisitions. This Golden Anniversary marks on 
the dial of time its greatest Thanksgiving Day. Well have 
the sons and daughters of the Old Colony supplemented with 
their own labors the humble beginnings of the Founders. 
There is still more to be done. Let the good work go on, 
let the reapers not grow weary, nor cease to gather in the 
harvest. With faith and good works, they may hope to see 
a still more glorious Thanksgiving Day when the sunrise of 
May 4, 1953, shall usher in their centenuary. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 079 815 




